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NLRB Issues Second Report on Social Media Cases

Wednesday, 25 January 2012 23:43

The General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) has just released a second report describing social media cases reviewed by his office. This new report addresses 14 different cases. Half of the cases involve questions about the legality of social media policies, and the other half of cases involve the discharge of employees after they posted comments about work on Facebook.

Of the policies addressed by the NLRB, five were found to be unlawful, one was lawful, and one was lawful after a revision. For the discharged employees, several discharges were found to be unlawful because they flowed from unlawful policies. In one case, however, the employee’s discharge was upheld, despite the existence of an unlawful policy, because the employee’s posting was not work related.

In addition, the General Counsel has also asked all regional offices of the NLRB to send him which the regions believe to be meritorious to the agency’s Division of Advice, located in Washington, D.C. So far, about 75 cases have been forwarded to the office to date.

You can read a full copy of the report here. You can also read a prior blog post on this topic here and the previous report here.